'Portraits of Perseverance' is an on-going multimedia community project that follows the lives of Malaysian women who persevere in the face of chronic illnesses, disabilities and transgender discrimination. It consists of blogs, video journals and TV documentaries. The first project (2011 to 2012) tells the stories of Lucy, Nisha, Pong and Sulastri. The second project in 2013 brings you Pong’s rehabilitation journey.

Saturday, 24 March 2012

What the interns think

eHomemakers has had its fair share of interns for the 'Portraits of Perseverance' project. Being part of the team means that we all know Morgan. At some point in our internships, we had to accompany her if she went somewhere to film the documentary (not because Morgan wanted us to or anything, Ching Ching insisted we did to protect her) Or we learnt from her by watching her edit the documentary footage.

Now its time to write a blog on what the interns really thought about her! And since she isn't here anymore, there's really nothing she can do about what we say. *evil smile*

The impression we all have in common about Morgan is how dedicated and hard-working she was in completing her role in the documentary. When all of us were sleepy, tired and lazy... Morgan seemed to be the complete opposite. She never complained about being tired and she was always alert! Morgan's walk was always fast-paced and full of determination while the rest of us usually had to run a little bit to keep up with her 'long Canadian legs'.

Junmey especially liked Morgan's 'go-get-em' attitude. She never gave up and there was always a plan B if plan A didn't work out. When Nisha and Sulastri were unreachable via handphone, Morgan went to PT Foundation by bus and train anyway and caught them during their lunch break.

Morgan loved to eat chocolate. But no matter how much chocolate she ate, she was good at losing it quickly. This is something we all couldn't understand. It seemed that Canadians are good in burning chocolate calories while Malaysians balloon up if we gobble chocolate the way she did.

"Can the two of you walk down to get some snacks for the office and deposit these checks?" Ching Ching asked Tzer Haw and I one afternoon. The two of us groaned.

"I'll do it!" Morgan said. "I need the exercise anyway!".

Although at that moment Tzer Haw and I were spared from the 20 minute walk, the consequences were ours to face. Both of us now have big flabby butts, while Morgan still fit into her tight jeans the day she left .

Intern Xian Ting remembers Morgan carrying her camera, Marvin, all over the Crown Plaza Hotel with ease while we were filming there. A camera like the one Morgan used was already heavy by itself, but Morgan didn't seem to care. Sometimes, she even carried the tripod as well. That was why we sometimes felt so useless around Morgan... she seemed to be able to do everything while we couldn't.

When we asked Tzer Haw what he thought about Morgan, his only reply was, "I realized girls can do a lot of things".

Well, obviously girls can do a lot of things. So after some persuasion, we got Tzer Haw to further explain what he meant, to which he replied "I used to think that what Morgan is doing is only done by men, not women. Furthermore, in a normal production, you will have one person behind the camera, one holding the lighting equipment, one interviewing and one standing around watching... But here Morgan does everything by herself. Even I can't do that".

Morgan would probably never know how big of a mark she has left on the 'Portraits of Perseverance' interns, especially the ones who just finished SPM last year. For the girl interns like Xian Ting, Junmey and myself, we learned that us as girls are capable of multi-tasking with technology, and as for the guy interns like Tzer Haw, well... I guess we can say his respect for women has definitely increased after meeting Morgan.